


Un dì, felice, eterea

by Casia_sage



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Anxiety, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Endeavour Morse Needs a Hug, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, He Just Gets a Coat Blanket, Hopeful Ending, I just really love these two, Me? Projecting Onto Morse? It's More Likely Than You'd Think, Panic Attacks, Parental Fred Thursday, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, but he doesn't get one, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:33:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21581209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casia_sage/pseuds/Casia_sage
Summary: He’s only ever known hurt and the small breaks in between.After the events of Home, Morse is struggling, to say the least."Un dì, felice, eterea" ("One day, happy, ethereal").
Relationships: Endeavour Morse & Fred Thursday
Comments: 13
Kudos: 76





	Un dì, felice, eterea

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Verdi's La Traviata :)

i. The winter is coming on--the snow is still wet and it doesn’t stick, but it makes the air somehow colder, and there’s sleet on the ground.

There’s something heart wrenching about funerals; they sound like endings--but no; he keeps living on through the hazy days. Hardly anyone shows up for it. It’s mostly just his sister and Gwen, a few family members that he barely recognizes. If it wasn’t for the persistent ache in his thigh and hip, he would’ve thought that, as he stood at his father’s grave with a poor excuse for a bouquet in his hands, that he was completely numb, even to the cold biting at his nose and cheeks. 

His sister looks him up and down, pats his shoulder and tells him to take care of himself, and there’s a look in her eyes that he recognizes all too well. Pity. 

ii. The next thing he knows, he’s on a train headed back to Oxford. He doesn’t remember the trip to the train station, nor does he remember his send off, but he’s not too sure that he really cares to remember. That’s been happening to him a lot lately, losing time. And there’s a persistent nausea, an emptiness in the pit of his stomach, reminding him that he’s lost too much time already. 

iii. He has a limp now, and he’s far from middle age. “You’re still healing,” the doctor tells him. But somehow he knows, deep down, in the way that his hip aches with an icy dullness, that it’s not going anywhere. The pain never goes away; it lessens some days, but it’s always there, thrumming in his bones.

iv. He wants to cry. Cry and cry until his body won’t let him anymore. But he somehow feels like that’s all he’s been doing lately, though he hasn’t cried; not since that day on the roof with Thursday.

Part of him wants someone to hit him, make him bleed, reopen all of his wounds, tell him that it doesn’t get better, to hell with all of the optimism. Cry and scream all you need, because this is how the world is; full of ache and structured darkness. Another part of him wants someone to hold him, be gentle with him in a way that no one has ever done before, except maybe his mother, but she’s a ghost dancing in hazy and vague memories of a life he hasn’t known for years. 

He thinks of Mrs. Coke Norris. He thinks of the 3 people she murdered (a man that he had talked to just hours before, dead on the ground. Someone he couldn’t save). He thinks of the way his heart felt, beating so hard against his ribcage that he thought it would break. He thinks of shots ringing out, smoke and the smell of gunpowder. And he thinks of Thursday and the fear in the older man’s eyes as he sees the blood soaking through his trousers. He thinks of those three victims. Three people. Three people who lost their lives because of a mad woman. Three people who she murdered (four, he thinks. Maybe he’s the fourth. She shot him and stole the light that was in his eyes. His humanity, his life, his fire, all taken out along with the bullet. He’s her fourth victim and he’s rotting in the ground just like his father). 

v. His depression comes in, sneaks in through the back door and coils itself around his throat, telling him that he’s tired of being happy anyway, he doesn’t want to be happy anymore, he wants to go back to being aching and infinitesimal and empty. But he knows that he was never happy in the first place. He’s only ever known hurt and the small breaks in between. He knows pain and the absence of pain, but happiness? Pleasure? Those are completely foreign to him  
  
vi. He’s sitting at a sunny widnow-side table in a little pub. Thursday slides a sandwich across the table to him as he unwraps his own. Monday. Cheese and pickle. He looks up at the older detective quizzically. 

“Eat it,” he demands, leaving no room for argument, but Endeavour makes no move to take it. “You need it. Go on.” 

The idea of eating makes his stomach churn. He’s not hungry anymore, or maybe he’s always hungry, and the line between them has blurred. Logically, he knows that this isn’t good for him. He doesn’t think that he’s eaten since his sister had forced him to before he left. He hasn’t been sleeping either. He’s been avoiding looking in the mirror, but he’s sure he must look terrible. He hasn’t slept in so long that there’s a disgusting, too-soft sickness in his stomach, his head feels too heavy for his hollow throat.

But Thursday is watching him intently. He unwraps it and takes a bite. It feels too heavy in his mouth, and the same in his stomach when he swallows. For a moment, he thinks he might be sick, but Thursday gives him an encouraging nod, and he guiltily takes another bite. 

By the time that he’s choked down half of it, he’s actually starting to feel better, and, slightly embarrassed, eats the rest a bit quicker. 

“There you go, lad,” Thursday says, giving him clap on the shoulder. 

If there’s suddenly more color back in his face, and his hands have stopped trembling so badly, neither of them say anything. 

They leave the pub in silence. On the drive back, Thursday looks like he might speak for a moment, but quickly resumes his tight, reserved posture. There’s nothing to say, really, but the air’s too heavy between them in a way it hasn’t really been before. Maybe it isn’t that there’s nothing to say, just that neither of them know what it is, and Morse has never been very good at fixing what’s broken. 

vii. The gunshots ring out with a series of quick intervals. It’s from the next room, but it makes his ears start ringing. His eyes wide and unblinking, not allowing him to remove his eyes from the eggshell-white wall in front of him, though the rest of his existence is frozen and fuzzy and static, glassy and breathless. 

His body isn’t his own anymore. It’s blurry and both impossibly light and devastatingly solid.

He checks his own pulse, thump thump thumping beneath his index finger. Alive. He’s alive. Somehow. Somehow, his heart is pumping blood. Pumping blood to his lungs, forcing him to breathe in air. Somehow, gravity holds him down and it’s far too heavy all of a sudden. Somehow he is there. Present and existing and alive, even if he doesn’t understand how. His pulse is thumping beneath his touch. Thump thump thump. Alive.  
He feels pressure on his shoulder, someone’s hand perhaps, but it feels like static, like a paresthesic limb, and he recoils at the contact. It’s trying to bring him to the real world, reel him back in, but the material world is too bright and stinging. The real world feels like a rush of adrenalin (the cut out picture of him pinned to the wall. Dr. Cronyn, or Keith Miller, or Mason Gull, or whoever he is, in the library, plunging a knife into his gut. Millicent Coke Norris with a gun pointed at him. His father’s chest, still and unmoving; the memories of his mother’s body, much the same). 

A voice echoes through his head, a deep and rich bass, and it makes his ears ache. His sight returns, though his eyes are watery and unfocused, like a dirty camera lense. Thursday hovers above him, lips moving, but the audio crackles and strains in his fragile ears. 

“ ‘orse,” he makes out. “Morse.”

Suddenly, with the unmistakable sensation of falling, he is pulled back to earth, where gravity has returned to normal levels, and the only evidence that he had ever left is the dull throbbing in his eye sockets and the quiet ringing in his ears. 

“Morse, you alright, lad?”

No. No, he isn’t alright. He hasn’t been _alright_ in so long. He’s tired. He wants to sleep until the earth reclaims his body. He wants this dull ache and the sharp panic to go away. He wants everything to go away. But... he wants someone to wrap him in something warm and hold him until he feels alright again. He doesn’t want to just _disappear._

“ ‘m fine,” he gasps out through his clenched jaw, shaking violently under his Guv’nor’s touch. 

Thursday’s eyes narrow, his brows knitting together in concern. “It was just the gun range, lad. That’s all.”

“Right,” he says breathlessly. “Of course.”

viii. Thursday insists on driving Morse home, and the younger man is already asleep in the passenger seat, pressed against the window, before they get halfway there. He occasionally glances over at Morse, watching his chest gently rise and fall, the way his slightly parted lips twitch as he dreams. He’s often thought that Morse looks too old for his years, somewhere deep in his eyes, but sitting there, asleep and vulnerable in the seat across from him, he looks impossibly _young;_ it makes the older man’s heart constrict and it forces him to take a wrong turn, and he somehow ends up at his own house instead. 

When they arrive, he almost doesn’t have the heart to wake him up, and half considers carrying him inside like he used to do when little Sam fell asleep in the car. Instead, he gingerly shakes his shoulder. “Morse.”

His too-big, entirely too-blue eyes flutter open and he blinks a few times, clearing the sleepy haze from his vision. “Sir?” Thursday only responds with a hum. “Why’re we at your house?”

“I told you I was taking you home, didn’t I?”

Morse frowns. “I took it that you were taking me to _my_ home, sir.”

“Well, you took it wrong,” he quips back. “Besides, Win’s been asking after you.”

Morse slowly snakes out of the car, but the scowl on his face doesn’t leave, even as Thursday opens the door for him and he walks in.

The house is much warmer, and Morse’s cheeks and nose are noticeably pink. The whole house smells of cinnamon and something sweet. 

“Back already, are you, Fred?” Win calls from the kitchen, and meets him in the hall, rosy-cheeked and clad in oven mits and an apron. She notices Morse then, and she smiles brightly. “Oh, Morse! It’s good to see you! You look half-frozen, poor thing. Why don’t you two go sit down? I just put the kettle on, and those cinnamon rolls are nearly done. That’ll warm you right through.” She puts her hand on Morse’s back, guiding him to the table.

ix. The sky is oil-black, but snow falls in sugar-clumps outside. Win is busy with dinner, but Morse and Thursday are seated at the table with two mugs of warm, sugared tea. It’s all too warm and _too soft and gentle._ He can’t stand it. The last memory he has of something like this is pale, gentle hands and wavy orange hair and her embrace, but she’s _gone,_ so he doesn’t get this kind of softness anymore; he _can’t._ She’s gone and so is all the softness in his life. “I-...I should get going, sir.”

“Nonsense, Morse,” Thursday says, head snapping up from his mug. “You’re staying for dinner, lad.”

“Really, sir-”

“Morse.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me!” he yells, standing up quickly, his mug clattering to the ground. 

Thursday freezes, shocked at his outburst. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll just-” he says desperately, going to pick up the mug which is luckily not broken. 

“Stop, Morse. It’s fine. You’re fine. Just sit down.” Thursday picks up the mug and sets it back on the table. “I’m not-” he sighs and finally looks at the younger man. “I’m not trying to embarrass you. I’m not saying that you can’t take care of yourself,” he says, though it’s true that he _can’t._ “But you’ve had a rough go of it lately. It’s okay to ask for help, lad. That doesn’t make you weak.”

Morse scoffs. “I don’t need-- I’m-” he swallows deeply and those brilliant blue eyes flick around the room before settling on the floor. “I can’t.”

“Then,” Thursday says “you don’t have to. You don’t have to ask. If you need help, we’ll just be there for you. All of us. No questions asked.”

The young Constable squeezes his eyes shut, turning his head down. His shoulders tense, sharp and pointed through the ill-fitting white shirt, and they begin to tremble gently. “You shouldn’t have to do that,” he says, voice soft and breathy, but not gentle; raw and shaky. 

“I don’t _have_ to do anything,” Thursday croons. “But someone oughta look out for you, eh?” 

Morse is still shuddering, but his eyes open, and after a few moments he lifts his head. He swallows deeply, and to Fred’s horror, or perhaps relief, his eyes are shimmering and wet; deep pools of light blue, reflecting everything around him, searching desperately for nothing in particular. But they’re not hollowed out and dull--they are deep and resonating, overflowing. His light hasn’t been put out afterall. His fingers, slender and white, tangle in his hair, one hand tugging nervously on his earlobe. 

His boss, his Guv’nor, is seated next to him, but he can’t control the pearly drops that tumble down his cheek. He wipes them away briskly, hoping that Thursday hadn’t seen. But he already knows that the older man has seen too much of him already for Morse to be able to once again disappear within himself. 

x. It’s thoroughly winter now, and the ground is white, as is the sky and the trees and the roofs of houses. It’s cold out, but inside it is warm, which is, Morse thinks, much like the human body; all cold and blue, but the insides are hot and pink, bloody and too soft. But the winter makes his insides feel too warm for his cold, aching skin.

Morse almost prays, but thinks twice about it. He’s never been religious, not really. Even when he’d go to church with his mother, the only holy thing that he ever felt there was his mother’s hand on his shoulder, the thunder ringing violently outside. For the second time in his life, he thinks about praying, but he doesn’t. God has no lungs. “Why can’t I _breathe?_ Why can’t I ever breathe?”

“I don’t know, lad,” Thursday says, and he drapes his coat around Morse’s shoulders. “But one day, you’ll be able to and it’ll seem ridiculous that there was ever a time that you couldn’t. Until then, we’ll see you right.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ahh this is my first time writing these characters, so hopefully it isn't too ooc. I just love these two so much.


End file.
